Before 42: Review

This time last year I set a few targets for the following 12 months. I actually managed to polish all of these off by April, meaning I could focus more on psychology and events blogging. The targets resulted in a mixed bag. 

1) Social Media Experiment 

Well, I tried to use X (formerly Twitter), this blog and a third site, Fame Registry, to boost my blog stats. Utter waste of time as the site was dead and hadn’t been updated in years. Plus X is a right-wing hellhole ran by a deluded billionaire nutter. Plus I ended up with a label on my account. Content is king. That’s how people will read your stuff: write well, and interest people with it. Don’t bother aggregating your stats by badgering people over social media. 

2) Photography Month 

I practised smartphone photography for a month. It was good to brush up, but I found it a difficult, slightly miserable experience. It felt like I was uninvolved with society, and felt tempted to dissociate to take pictures. There also wasn’t a great deal happening in the city in August / September last year. Brushed up on photography skills with YouTube videos, though. That’s going to help with blogging in future. I desperately need a new phone, though. 

3) CBD and Memory 

I started to take CBD every day back in September last year. This was in the hope that I might see some improvement on things like memory and anxiety. I reviewed it after a month: No difference. I continued using it, and researching it. I found other people were equally unimpressed. I finished the bottle in January. I can’t say there was much improvement to memory or mental health.  

4) Zinc and Hair Growth 

I’m now 42. Of course I’m losing my hair. You can only control the controllables, as they say. Like many people my age, I’m starting to thin on the crown of the head. There’s some evidence to suggest that the mineral zinc can help with follicle growth, but it didn’t seem to do me any good. 

5) Namman Muay and Flexibility 

Namman Muay, or Muay Thai oil, is used by Muay Thai fighters to prevent bruising and accelerate recovery. There’s some suggestion that the ointment can increase flexibility too. I wanted to see if I could regain some of the flexibility I had in my late teens / early 20s. I sat down with my feet against the skirting board, and tried to edge my ankles out away from each other, whilst slapping on the pungent Namman Muay. Well, I made improvements throughout the 2 months I practised this, but got nowhere near my PB from 2014 by the time the bottle ran out. But at least I beat my running records. Did Namman Muay have anything to do with that? It was mostly improvements to diet.  

6) See Scandinavia 

I went to Copenhagen with the parents in April. See Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4. Incredible few days of museums, learning about Norse boat making from 1000 years ago, swimming in the Baltic and cycling. I’d love to get to a few more capital cities in Scandinavia. I’ve scouted out a few possibilities. They’re all a little dearer than Copenhagen though… 

What a year. 5/6 of these challenges were failures. The last was a total success.